In this episode of Breaking Precedent, host Leah Solivan dives deep into the life-altering journey of Sarah Hoover, author of 'The Motherload.' Sarah discusses how her rage and postpartum depression propelled her to write a raw and honest memoir that challenges societal norms about motherhood. Leah and Sarah unpack topics such as postpartum trauma, the inadequacies of the medical system, and the unique challenges faced by working mothers. Sarah’s story doesn’t just break precedent, it dismantles the silence around maternal mental health and invites us to question the rigid norms we've long accepted.

Guest Bio and Links:

Sarah Hoover is an art historian, writer, and former director at Gagosian Gallery whose work centers around the cultural intersections of womanhood, art, and maternal identity. Her debut book The Mother Load dismantles the myths of motherhood through raw honesty and wit. She lives with her husband and two kids in Manhattan.

Listeners can learn more about Sarah Hoover on her website, and on IG @sarahhoov

Sarah’s book - The Motherload: Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood

Show Notes:

• (0:00) Intro
• (2:00) Leah introduces guest, Sarah Hoover to Breaking Precedent
• (2:30) Icebreaker - child yelp reviews
• (5:00) Sarah’s roots - ballet, art, and indiana
• (7:30) Connecting over ballet
• (13:00) “ I have a very standard birth, but I found it violating and scary and terrifying, and it left me really broken. When my son was born after 19 hours of labor, I felt so assaulted by what I had been through in that delivery room.”
• (15:00) Turning rage into purose
• (20:00) Cultural conditioning and the female burden
• (24:30) Failures of modern medicine and the edinburgh scale
• (31:30) Sarah’s acknowledged the need to seek help
• (32:00) Another layer of stress - entrusting a nanny to help parent
• (33:00) Medical history of maternal care
• (35:30) Trauma-informed care - what needs to change
• (39:00) AI medical care becoming preferred over human medical care?
• (40:00) Leah shares her surrogacy experience and seeing birth from the other side
• (43:00) What writing has taught Sarah
• (50:45) Question:  What's one piece of parenting advice you think is bullshit?
• (53:00) Breaking precedents - you can’t have it all (at once)

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Leah Solivan is the host of Breaking Precedent, a podcast that explores the stories of innovators who are pushing societal boundaries and setting new precedents in their fields. Leah is General Partner at Fuel Capital, where she invests in early-stage companies across consumer technology, hardware, education, marketplaces, and retail. Leah has 15 years of experience building and creating technology products that have reached millions of people around the globe. She started her career at IBM as an engineer in the software group, working on Lotus Notes and Domino. In 2008, Leah founded TaskRabbit, the leading on-demand service marketplace in the world.

Connect with Leah:

Website: breakingprecedent.com/

Instagram: @labunleashed

X: @labunleashed

In this episode of Breaking Precedent, host Leah Solivan sits down with Chris Redlitz and Beverly Parenti, co-founders of The Last Mile, a groundbreaking prison education program that’s transforming lives behind bars through coding, entrepreneurship, and purpose. From venture capital success stories in Silicon Valley to walking the yards of San Quentin and Indiana State Prisons, Chris and Beverly share their radical journey into social innovation. They explore how tech education is breaking generational cycles of incarceration, lowering recidivism rates, and redefining second chances. Chris and Beverly share some deeply moving stories of transformation, including a woman who declined early release to finish the program, and a man who was once cellmates with his father.

Guest Bio and Links:

Chris Redlitz is a venture capitalist and former endurance athlete who co-founded The Last Mile after a pivotal visit to San Quentin prison. With a background in growing companies like Reebok and launching digital ventures, he now channels his entrepreneurial experience into transforming prison education.

Beverly Parenti is a veteran tech entrepreneur and innovator who co-founded The Last Mile to empower incarcerated individuals, particularly women, with marketable skills. As the first-generation daughter of Holocaust survivors, Beverly's life has been profoundly shaped by her father's experiences during World War II. Her father's story of survival became a guiding light in her life, instilling in her the values of resourcefulness, resilience, and relentless perseverance.

Learn more about The Last Mile at their website

Connect with Chris Redlitz on LinkedIn @ChrisRedlitz, and on X @ChrisRedlitz

Connect with Beverly Parenti on LinkedIn @BeverlyParenti and on X @thebev

Show Notes:

• (0:00) Intro
• (1:45) Leah introduces guests, Chris and Beverly to Breaking Precident
• (2:10) Icebreaker - moments that changed everything
• (4:30) Beverly's journey - from retail to PayPal
• (7:00) Chris’s journey from sailing to Silicon Valley
• (10:00) The birth of The Last Mile
• (15:00)  ”What my father taught me was to be resourceful, to be resilient and relentless. and to this day, those three Rs are not only part of my mo, but also things that I teach others.” - Beverly Parenti
• (21:30) First steps - building trust in San Quentin
• (26:00) The business case for prison reform
• (28:00) Impact and success - reducing recidivism
• (31:30) Expansion and new programs
• (35:00) Culture shift - from infractions to aspirations
• (38:00) Rigorous application process
• (43:00) Stories of transformation - Billie and Darnell
• (44:30) Generational change through scholarships
• (46:30) Scaling and adapting the program nationwide
• (52:00) Social enterprises and equity for graduates
• (56:00) What they’ve unlearned
• (1:00:00) Reflections and tuture goals

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Leah Solivan is the host of Breaking Precedent, a podcast that explores the stories of innovators who are pushing societal boundaries and setting new precedents in their fields. Leah is General Partner at Fuel Capital, where she invests in early-stage companies across consumer technology, hardware, education, marketplaces, and retail. Leah has 15 years of experience building and creating technology products that have reached millions of people around the globe. She started her career at IBM as an engineer in the software group, working on Lotus Notes and Domino. In 2008, Leah founded TaskRabbit, the leading on-demand service marketplace in the world.

Connect with Leah:

Website: breakingprecedent.com/

Instagram: @labunleashed

X: @labunleashed

In this episode of Breaking Precedent, host Leah Solivan sits down with Matteo Franceschetti, the visionary founder and CEO of Eight Sleep, to explore how sleep is becoming the most critical, and most overlooked dimension of human performance. From growing up in an Italian town to revolutionizing sleep technology in Silicon Valley, Matteo shares a remarkable journey of grit, ambition, and innovation. He opens up about the transformation from competitive athlete to tech entrepreneur, and why he believes the future of sleep lies in compression, personalization, and AI-driven health scans. The two dive into topics like sleep fitness, temperature regulation, global expansion, and even how sleep training parallels child development.

Guest Bio and Links:

Matteo Franceschetti is the Co-Founder and CEO of Eight Sleep, the sleep fitness company.Eight Sleep developed a proprietary technology which is redesigning sleep by developing cutting-edge AI and machine learning models to track bio signals during the night and optimizing body recovery and rest while asleep. The end goal of the Pod is to compress sleep and scan your body while asleep to monitor your health. Eight Sleep is currently used by pro athletes and top performers across multiple industries and was recognized as one of TIME’s “Best Inventions” in 2018 and 2019, was named one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies” in 2018, and has raised over $150M in funding from leading investors, including Founders Fund, Softbank, Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, Valor Equity Partners, General Catalyst, Naval Ravikant, and Patrick Collison.

Discover your perfect sleep set up - Take Quiz

Connect with Matteo Franceschetti on X @m_franceschetti

Show Notes:

• (0:00) Intro
• (1:30) Leah introduces guest, Co-Founder and CEO of Eight Sleep, Matteo Franceschetti
• (2:00) Q: If you could sleep anywhere in the world, where would it be?
• (3:00) Matteo’s early life and career as lawyer
• (9:00) The Birth of Eight Sleep
• (10:30) Innovations in sleep technology
• (13:30) Redefining sleep as performance
• (16:30) Full-body scanning - the future of preventative health
• (19:00) Contrasts between italian and Silicon Valley cultures
• (26:00) The discipline of survival in hardware
• (30:00) Jet lag strategies and biohacking sleep
• (33:30) Early challenges in manufacturing
• (37:00) Sleep’s role in the health tech movement
• (40:00) Eight sleep's operating principles and startup discipline
• (40:30) “ I always push the team to think in terms of hours.”
• (42:30) Closing thoughts

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Leah Solivan is the host of Breaking Precedent, a podcast that explores the stories of innovators who are pushing societal boundaries and setting new precedents in their fields. Leah is General Partner at Fuel Capital, where she invests in early-stage companies across consumer technology, hardware, education, marketplaces, and retail. Leah has 15 years of experience building and creating technology products that have reached millions of people around the globe. She started her career at IBM as an engineer in the software group, working on Lotus Notes and Domino. In 2008, Leah founded TaskRabbit, the leading on-demand service marketplace in the world.

Connect with Leah:

Website: breakingprecedent.com/

Instagram: @labunleashed

X: @labunleashed